The feisty Esther (Lucy Freyer) gets to know her gentle husband, Schmuli (Dave Klasko), on their wedding night.
When Katie Holmes made her New York stage debut in 2008, she was married to Tom Cruise, and paparazzi descended on Broadway for her run in the All My Sons revival. Coincidentally, one of the first things Holmes says in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers is “I can’t go anywhere in public without a hassle.” Holmes portrays a beautiful, famous actress, which sounds like a good fit for her. The role is a bad fit for the play itself, however, as it does not cohere with the other story lines.
The Wanderers follows two marriages: Esther and Schmuli, a Hasidic Jewish couple wed after one arranged meeting, and Sophie and Abe, a pair of writers who’ve known each other since childhood. Both couples live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—Esther and Schmuli because that’s where the Satmar Hasids are based, Sophie and Abe because they’re artsy New Yorkers in the 21st century.
Attention from “luminous” movie star Julia Cheever (Katie Holmes, left) flatters writer Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas, right) in Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers.
Holmes plays Julia Cheever, with whom Abe engages in an online flirtation after she attends a book reading of his. What Julia shares with Abe doesn’t distinguish her from a generic movie star, and it has no real impact on the plot, so their scenes are both dramatically inert (as scenes of emailing tend to be) and largely inconsequential.
By contrast, the scenes involving Esther and Schmuli—who, it is revealed, are Abe’s parents— bristle with charm and emotionality. Esther has yearnings that are forbidden by her strict religion, evident from the first scene, when she confesses to her new husband, “I’ve read books I probably shouldn’t have read” and does more than him to initiate sex on their wedding night. Schmuli admires her spirit, even if he’s wary of her potential rebellion out of fealty to the community and fear of his father. Under the direction of Barry Edelstein, actors Lucy Freyer and Dave Klasko take the audience on an unexpectedly poignant journey with the characters, outshining their better-known castmates, who, in addition to Holmes, include TikTok-famous comedian Sarah Cooper and American Pie costar Eddie Kaye Thomas.
Sophie and Abe’s relationship does not come alive as well as Esther and Schmuli’s, in part because their blocking is often limited to walking on and off stage and in part because some of their dialogue is just exposition for the audience, like when Sophie (Cooper) recites her long-ago book review in the Times. But the biggest obstacle to a fully informed, moving portrayal of their marriage—as Ziegler achieves with Schmuli and Esther’s—is that their story centers on the insufferable Abe (Thomas), a literary egoist in the Philip Roth mold. Both Sophie and Julia are shortchanged as far as backstory and personality development, yet oh-so-much is discussed about Abe’s feelings and experiences.
“Both Sophie and Julia are shortchanged as far as backstory and personality development.”
Roth is Abe’s idol and one of the writers, along with Yeats and Tolstoy, whose words he drops into conversation. Abe also converses in statements like this: “What is there in this world to have faith in besides the self? Certainly not humanity, which is filled with real cruelty and the performance of cruelty, and certainly not God—the ultimate in unreliability.” He calls his own book “a work of sheer genius” and bristles at the thought of making small talk with his barber or Uber driver.
Perhaps worst of all, the part of The Wanderers revolving around Abe feels unoriginal and retrograde, from a time before the “We See You, White American Theater” manifesto, when the nonprofit houses just loved producing plays that take place within the affluent, New Yorker–quoting white bubble of Brooklyn or the Upper West Side.
Abe (Thomas) and his wife Sophie (Sarah Cooper, right) both have mothers who broke with Hasidic traditions. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
In The Wanderers, patterns of behavior and temperament from Esther and Schmuli’s relationship repeat in their son’s marriage. But the whole Julia episode is not intertwined with the rest of the plot, except that Abe’s dalliance with Julia relates to the play’s title—a reference not only to Jews historically but to, as Sophie puts it, “a sort of galvanizing restlessness that always leaves you empty,” something that afflicts nearly every character in the play. As long as Ziegler keeps the focus on the married couples, these introspections carry emotional weight.
Holmes does look nice in her fashionable trousers and chunky sweater (costume design by David Israel Reynoso). And The Wanderers’ scenic design, by Marion Williams, is striking as well. A mosaic of open books forms the backdrop, and a large conference table at center stage serves as all furniture, be it desk, seat, or bed. Slits of light shine through the books on the wall, and piles of books on the floor are illuminated by designer Kenneth Posner in the same way.
The Wanderers runs through April 2 at Roundabout’s Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 W. 46th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit roundabouttheatre.org.
